[00:00:00] Over the years, decades, centuries, we have been told that forgiveness is one of the highest virtues a human being can reach. [00:00:12] Forgive and you will find peace. [00:00:16] Forgive and you will heal. [00:00:20] Forgive and you will finally be free. [00:00:24] And what if forgiveness is not liberation at all? [00:00:30] What if it becomes obligation, Conditioning, societal expectation, a burden placed on you long before you ever had a choice. [00:00:46] Many people, especially women, were not taught forgiveness as a free act of grace. [00:00:57] They were taught endurance, tolerance, silence, to understand more, to forgive more, to absorb more, excuse more, stay longer, caring more. [00:01:18] And somewhere in that process, forgiveness stopped being healing and became self betrayal. [00:01:28] So today I want to talk about over forgiving, not forgiveness itself, but the moment. [00:01:37] Then forgiveness becomes excessive, becomes obligation. [00:01:46] Then forgiveness placed on you become something where you override your body, your experience, your rage, your rights, your discernment. [00:02:03] And what if your inability to forgive is not failure? [00:02:09] What if this is the last part of you still protecting what you know inside, what's right, what is sacred for you? [00:02:23] This is excellent rising. I am Anamayo Somatic Experiencing therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery. I run Somatic Trauma Recovery center. And for all my offerings, please see the links below. [00:02:37] Let's begin over Forgiveness. [00:02:40] There is a cultural pressure that you need to forgive. [00:02:44] The expectation is already placed on you the moment harm happens. [00:02:52] And it comes with the spiel that the moment you forgive and let go, you will be more at peace, you will continue your life and the horror will disappear from your memory, your body and your soul. [00:03:11] And if you don't forgive, then somehow you're behind in your spiritual development, not evolved enough, not enlightened enough, or not there yet. [00:03:31] And now we have people forcing themselves toward this pinnacle of forgiveness, believing it will set them free from pain and harm, forcing themselves to forgive. And I can see this over and over with clients who are coming to our office who feel deeply ashamed because they are not able to forgive while everyone else can. [00:04:03] And on that path they become more and more betrayed. [00:04:09] Betrayed by themselves and by all around them who appear so enlightened and so able to forgive at ease. [00:04:20] And what is really talked about is how historically the forgiveness card has often been used to keep people silenced, compliant, obedient and tamed. [00:04:36] It is very powerful, insidious tool to overpower someone. [00:04:47] Culturally, forgiveness has often been placed upon women as a virtue that they need to show loyalty to a husband, to his family, to community, to society. [00:05:05] And actually it became heavy burden, one that purposefully silence. Abuse done to you, neglect done to you, injustice done to you, harassment, assault and suffering. You lived through and witnessed. [00:05:27] It is very, very insidious tool where you just need to endure and keep forgiving. [00:05:39] And this setup didn't start with you. [00:05:43] It is a setup taught by mothers and grandmothers, A, ah, lineage of over forgiving women. [00:05:53] This is not about a single instance of forgiveness, which we all do. [00:05:59] I'm not talking about act of forgiveness. There is a difference between forgiveness and living in a, uh, continuous state of over forgiveness. [00:06:15] And where is that line? [00:06:18] At what point did you cross it without even awareness? [00:06:24] And at, uh, what point is forgiveness no longer forgiveness, but over forgiveness that has now become a tool for continuous mistreatment, abuse, injustice. [00:06:44] How many times you hurt just in your own family growing up? [00:06:49] Forgive him. He didn't mean that. [00:06:54] He worked so hard. [00:06:58] Forgive him. [00:07:00] He has been sober for 29 days. [00:07:04] It was only one night. [00:07:07] Who is drinking and raging? [00:07:12] Forgive him. [00:07:15] He has childhood trauma. [00:07:19] Forgive your adult child who is 32. [00:07:23] He is still trying to grow up. [00:07:29] Oh, forgive his addiction. [00:07:32] It is a disease. [00:07:34] He needs your support all the time. [00:07:41] Forgive betrayal. [00:07:44] Men are like that. [00:07:48] Or it is generational racism, nationalism, sexism, which goes as well. He's 80, he's boomer, he doesn't know better. [00:08:06] And how many times have you over forgiven continuous behavior that harmed you, behavior that stole your peace, took your health, took your finances? [00:08:23] And to what extent has forgiveness been used to keep women silenced? [00:08:30] Because this is deeply gendered. [00:08:32] It's deeply, deeply gendered because as a woman, when you show your rage, when you demand accountability, responsibility, reciprocity, justice, you become labeled as not loving enough, not caring enough, not supportive enough. [00:08:59] The new one is not spiritual enough, not enlightened enough, as if forgiveness itself will set you free from being on the receiving end of the same cycle of horror or injustice. [00:09:24] It will not. [00:09:27] It will not. [00:09:29] And you never will. [00:09:32] And culturally, when have, uh, men been raised with the same burden that they need to forgive endlessly? [00:09:42] Women accepted betrayal, women endured, women adopted. [00:09:49] But when was a man cast out from society or church for doing wrong, for betraying? [00:10:00] When was he asked to endlessly forgive those who hurt him? [00:10:09] And of course, if you're a man and you have also been raised this way, you know how this feels too. [00:10:17] When you're pressured to forgive continuously, it is not right. [00:10:25] But feel how this has led for women who were historically raised only to over forgive as its biblical virtue. [00:10:39] And over forgiving becomes, as I said, insidious tool used on women and girls to make them compliant, confused and disconnected from clarity around what is right and wrong. [00:10:58] And when you Lose that clarity when you lose that discernment and sovereignty in your body, in your cognitive capacities, in your instincts, you give harmful behaviors and uncountable people more and more power over you. And yes, you are enabling abuse subconsciously and you are enabling injustice through over forgiving. And it's a perfect tool for abuse, especially in spiritual communities and cults, that the forgiveness card can be used to enable continuous harm. [00:11:48] One of the two biggest signs you can track is being confused and being ashamed. [00:11:55] And yet you don't know why. [00:12:00] And also what is placed is if you don't forgive, you learn quickly that you will be excluded, you'll be cast out, cut out from family, from your community and over. Forgiveness is often manipulated by the very person harming you. [00:12:27] And it can be by the person who thinks it loves you. It can come from your mother, it can come from your grandmother. And to forgive in this context means betraying yourself, betraying your values, betraying clarity of your mind, betraying your truth, betraying your moral compass. [00:12:56] And this is not a virtue. [00:12:58] It is a tool that keeps you shut down and harmed. [00:13:06] Do not force forgiveness on you, uh, and don't let anyone force forgiveness on you. [00:13:18] Seek accountability, seek responsibility, seek justice. And this is not revenge. [00:13:27] It is a moral request you have every right to seek. [00:13:34] If you have been assaulted and you forgive immediately, would the assaulted part of your nervous system ever feel safe? [00:13:48] That quiet part inside of you who lives in terror and wakes up in the middle of the night with panic attacks, it'll never feel safe. [00:14:03] It'll feel betrayed by you. [00:14:08] So this is not revenge. [00:14:10] It is your right to stop enduring under the expectation of forgiveness, when forgiveness is being used to keep you silent. [00:14:24] And how do you find peace? [00:14:28] How do you set yourself free? [00:14:30] By seeking what is right for you. [00:14:34] Respect, peace, reciprocity, answers which will not make you feel even more confused. [00:14:46] Boundaries. [00:14:49] And when that doesn't come, after many cycles of harm and betrayal and uh, many times of you communicating what you need and what are your expectations, you cut the relationship and then you grieve. [00:15:15] You accept the experience you had grieving and acceptance is a big part of this. [00:15:22] But you don't submit yourself to forced forgiveness by a society that ask you to betray yourself again and again. [00:15:34] So what you're learning here, forgiveness is a freely chosen. [00:15:41] It's internally generated release that comes after genuine processing of harm if you choose to. [00:15:53] That's forgiveness over. Forgiveness over. Forgiving is compulsory performance of release demanded by others before your harm has been processed, before even you choose. If you want to forgive or not, often repeating an endless cycle of pain, betrayal, abuse. [00:16:28] So think about this. Forgiveness is a single act, and it's very slow internal movement over. Forgiveness is a state of your nervous system. Um, it is a living where you always expected to be in the act of forgiveness, to be in the act of forgiving someone who is still harming you. Or it can be one act of harm. [00:17:03] And this is not spiritual. [00:17:07] It is a trap. [00:17:10] And I want to address here spiritual communities and dumbness cultures. [00:17:16] Because I can hear so many times my clients are telling me, oh, I feel like I'm not enlightened enough, I'm not involved enough, I'm not spiritual enough. [00:17:28] And ah, the person who demands accountability is framed as spiritually mature. [00:17:37] The person who absorbs Karm endlessly is framed as the model. [00:17:46] And this is very acute in cults, but also runs through mainstream wellness culture, where forgiveness becomes as a whip, where you will feel ashamed if you don't do it and if it's not coming to you easily. [00:18:17] As requested by big gurus, by someone who knows what the spirit is, by someone who claims they know what their spiritual living is. [00:18:31] And I work with clients with very complex trauma and ptsd. [00:18:40] Please check my somatic trauma recovery center. Someone who went through so much harm for years and decades. [00:18:49] What kept them going is a deep faith and deep spirituality. [00:19:00] So if you ever felt ashamed by someone calling you, you're not spiritual enough, I can tell you right now, uh, you're the most spiritual person. [00:19:15] If you survived what you survived, and those people are spiritual bullshitters. [00:19:24] It's so simple. [00:19:27] Second, there is intergenerational transmission. [00:19:32] This is not only about individual belief. [00:19:36] It is a lesson passed from mother to daughter across, uh, generation. To endure, to adopt, to forgive. And women who try to break this pattern often face the most resistance from within the family. [00:19:54] And many times, people who love you most can enable the harm the most because how they were raised and conditioned and these, uh, virtues of patience, loyalty, spiritual endurance. [00:20:14] Love is assigned disproportionately to women. And conveniently, these are exactly the virtues that keep women compliant with mistreatment. And then when women demand the responsibility, reciprocity, justice, she gets to be labeled as not loving enough, not spiritual enough, not supportive enough. [00:20:48] And this is classic manipulation. [00:20:51] Make the victim's reasonable response into proof of her deficiency, so the abuser behavior never gets examined. [00:21:04] So let me repeat this. [00:21:07] When victim reasonable response, request for justice, accountability is made as a, uh, tool for her deficiency. So the abuser behavior never gets examined Is classic historical move of power over you. [00:21:33] So what that means, if you heard your friend or your mother, grandmother saying, oh, forgive him, he didn't mean that. [00:21:42] Well, uh, this is denial of harm. [00:21:46] Or when someone says, oh, it was a childhood trauma, he went through so much, what that means we are now externalizing accountability to the abuser's history. [00:22:00] Or when you're using words as oh, he's a racist, he is 82. [00:22:07] Are we using age, culture and uh, history to place the burden of change entirely on um, the person harmed because he's 80? [00:22:24] That's that generation. But your generation now needs to do better. [00:22:31] Isn't that easy way out? [00:22:34] Think about this over and over forgiving. And let's look what the long term behavioral cost of over forgiveness does to you. [00:22:51] Big one is loss of clarity. [00:22:54] When you're required to override your own perception of harm over and over, you stop trusting that perception. [00:23:07] You stop trusting your interoception and proprioception and the ability to discern what is right and wrong, what is safe and unsafe erodes. [00:23:25] And this is a real psychological outcome of environments where your heart recognition is constantly invalidated. [00:23:36] And to lose your sense of clarity means you're losing your confidence, you're losing your power. [00:23:48] And who wants powerful women in patriarchal cultures? [00:23:53] Second, disconnection from the body. [00:23:56] Trauma is stored in your sama, in your body. [00:24:02] And cognitive declaration of forgiveness does not reorganize the nervous system threat response. So let me repeat this. [00:24:13] You can declare verbally, you can write the notes, you can say your mantras, you can say I forgive. [00:24:25] That does not reorganize the nervous system threat response. [00:24:32] That part will be wide away until it heals. [00:24:39] But healing is relational and it needs repairment and it needs justice and it cannot be forced by forgiving. [00:24:52] So forcing that declaration while the harm continues can actually deepen the dissociation between mind and body. [00:25:04] And ptsd, hypervigilance, dissociation, trauma stays unhealed for decades. [00:25:18] And what is very often people who forgive, they're coming and saying, how come I forgive? I did everything and I still, I'm not healed. [00:25:39] I'm failing even in my healing. [00:25:43] So look at the impact when we are saying to our clients, to people to forgive. [00:25:52] This forgiving is actually vicious cycle of over forgiving. [00:25:57] And what is very important here, over forgiveness trains you to give up your agency over your own interpretation of your experience of your own life, of uh, what was done to you. [00:26:20] And once that's gone, then your clarity, then your discernment Then your sovereignty in your body is gone. You're becoming very open to continued manipulation and power over a living. [00:26:39] And over forgiving is not just harmful to you. [00:26:44] It functionally enables the abuser or harmful behavior. It removes consequences. [00:26:51] This is why we have adult kids who are in 20s and 30s without any accountability and responsibility because they still act as their teenagers. [00:27:10] And what's the impact of that teenager who is now married and raising a family? [00:27:20] Was the impact of that person on their kids, now their partner? [00:27:29] Because what was enabled by over forgiving mother is there is no any consequences and there is no need for any accountability. [00:27:43] And growing up. [00:27:45] So if you're in this place where you're forced to over forgive and to forgive, then you know it's not right. [00:27:58] You don't have to forgive to heal. [00:28:03] You don't have to forgive before you're ready. [00:28:07] And you may never forgive. [00:28:12] And that does not make you spiritually deficient or stuck. [00:28:21] You have right to be angry because when we become angry, that's a response to harm. [00:28:39] Not something to manage away as quickly as possible, but something that contains data about what was done and what needs to happen next for you. [00:28:50] Do not carry shame about wanting accountability because many times people are afraid. Accountability means revenge, vengeance. [00:29:06] That's not the same. [00:29:09] Seeking accountability, seeking responsibility, justice is not revenge. It is a moral request. It is under your human rights. [00:29:22] If you're a therapist, a coach, monitor, if you are even without intention tending to push forgiveness as a therapeutic goal, as a treatment plan. And the premise is usually that holding resentment is harmful to your client and that forgiveness is a form of self liberation of end of harm. [00:29:54] So that has validity in some context. [00:29:59] But if forgiveness is presented as a goal or benchmark therapy before the client has genuinely processed harm or decided what they want to do, it can re enact exactly dynamic of what client wants to heal from. [00:30:25] Because now the therapist becomes another voice telling the client they're not there yet and that's not therapy. [00:30:37] So as a therapist, examine your own bias around forgiveness as an outcome metric. Sit with clients anger longer and treat anger as very meaningful data. [00:30:56] Don't be afraid of client's anger and also be aware if your client is coming with a history of being pressured to forgive. [00:31:10] If you as a therapist pressure your client in that direction, however subtle, you will reenact original harm and working on boundaries, grieving, acceptance of what happened can be complete resolution without forgiveness and your client will recover faster. Today piece I will end with couple of questions for you. [00:31:44] Pause and ask am I an over Forgiver who taught me this, who is pushing forgiveness onto me? [00:32:06] What do they gain from it? [00:32:10] I'm Anna Mayo, this is Exile in Rising. [00:32:16] Please check all the links in the show notes below. [00:32:19] Review, share and as always, much care. Much care.